


like a river runs

by storytellingape



Series: sweet darlin', come hold me [1]
Category: Crash Pad (2017), Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 18th Century, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Catholicism, Historical Inaccuracy, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Mail Order Brides, References to Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 21:24:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: The year is 188-; Stensland is a mail-order bride fleeing Ireland for a better life. Clyde is a lonely farmer fulfilling the conditions of his inheritance. They build a life together, a home.





	like a river runs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sterne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterne/gifts).



> This is primarily [stern3stars](https://twitter.com/stern3stars)'s fault as well as [remorselessgays](https://twitter.com/remorselessgays)', so this is in fact dedicated to them. There's a lot of hand-wavy stuff going on, and this is not entirely historically accurate as this was supposed to just have been porn... so. There you go.
> 
> The A/B/O I felt was necessary (what, I like it) to hand-wavily (the main theme of this fic apparently) explain why it was OK for Stensland and Clyde to marry despite living in the 18th century but it's not really the focal point though there is talk of impregnation. I'll most likely revisit this and write a longer more elaborate AU once I've actually done my work and researched the Potato Famine and the American Civil War but until then have this, whatever it is (PS read with hindbrain only). The DV, btw, is not between Clyde and Stensland, but Stensland's parents. 
> 
> Title is from Bleachers.
> 
>  **EDIT** : I realised initially I had this set at night so I quickly fixed all references to that because the rest of the fic is set in the late afternoon, sorry lol.
> 
> Also, [remorselessgays](https://twitter.com/remorselessgays) made a [lovely moodboard for this fic on tumblr](https://clydelands.tumblr.com/post/171286577426/like-a-river-runs-by-storytellingape-the-year-is#notes).

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The wedding ceremony passes like a dream: a candle is lit, vows are exchanged, and a ring is thrust onto Stensland’s finger before his mouth is caught in a perfunctory kiss. He doesn’t remember the rest of the ceremony, only the long walk from the clapboard church to his husband’s house, a long loping path paved roughly with stone, making his feet hurt. He’s full: of drink, of food, of soft sweet bread that caulks dusts of sugar into the lines of his palms. He feels it even now in the back of his throat, a tickle of sweetness he hopes will linger for the rest of the day so that his husband might still taste it, later in bed when he undresses Stensland for the first time. 

Stensland has come a long way from home where the houses stink of fish from the wharf and the sky is grey as soggy newsprint. Here, the air is tinged with dust from the mines, thick with nascent humidity and the leaves colour more fully, shades as bright as Stensland’s hair. 

Stensland knows he’ll never go hungry, or steal from the baker’s boy again when his back is turned. 

Stensland has been beaten a number of times, his ears boxed, for stealing bread, for asking for more at supper, for always wanting more than he was allowed, always with his hands outstretched; he isn’t afraid of going hungry. But he’d left Ireland for America in want of a better life. He told everybody who asked that he wanted to live in luxury, growing fat with pups and spending the rest of his days in idleness, waited on hand and foot, but the truth was he wanted to escape, same as everybody else; it was only a matter of time before he was sold to the first suitor that came knocking at their door, and in exchange for what — a cart of milk? A strong horse? His mam had left his da because she knew what was good for her, unable to withstand the nightly beatings when drink made him a different man. 

Stensland eyes his husbandas he walks alongside him: the neat beard, the sweep of dark hair, the arm ending abruptly at the wrist where he’d lost his hand in an accident in the mines. His heart starts to race in his throat, his palms sweating. 

The agency had taken a photograph of Stensland so they had something to show potential husbands, nothing illicit of course, just Stensland sitting stiffly in a high-backed chair in an ill-fitting suit loaned to him by the agency, smelling of mildew and damp, his hair carefully combed. A month later and he had a match: Clyde Logan from West Virginia. He had sent Stensland a photograph too grainy for him to clearly make out the details of, though he could see enough of Clyde’s nose and how it jutted from the rest of his face. If Stensland turned the photograph to the left, it sometimes looked as if Clyde were smiling, and he liked that, how he could tilt the photograph in different directions and Clyde’s pale face went from pleasant to grim. 

Stensland took the photograph with him everywhere he went, even on the ship, tucked inside the pocket of his coat, creased in the corners from its many hiding places. He took the letters too, bundling them in twine, and which he had the altar boy read to him whenever they smoked behind the church after sermon, Stensland’s face burning as they became progressively embarrassing, more affectionate in tone, imagining Clyde whispering these nicknames to him at night: dearest, sweetheart, _darling_ , in a bed that didn’t make his back hurt. He liked darling best, because it made him feel small, like something that needed protecting, instead of tall and gangly with awkward limbs and hands raw from scrubbing strangers’ floors. 

He didn’t have much in the way of personal effects when he’d left: just a moth-eaten coat, a pillow, a change of undergarments, a small tin box where he kept his suppressants in a neat little row, pressing the little white pills between his thumb and forefinger, counting each one before he slept, making sure there were enough for his voyage and that no one stole them while he was above deck, trying his best not to get seasick. 

He stopped taking his suppressants a few days after he’d arrived at the house, his head fogging up the morning of his wedding as he fretted and fretted and made himself almost sick in the bath, scrubbing his skin raw, making sure he was clean, there, there, down where it sometimes twitched when he watched his not-yet husband tug his braces over his shoulders, or take his coffee in the morning, or frown at something he read in the paper. 

Clyde was a handsome man, in spite of or maybe because of his size. His long dark hair he wore almost to the shoulders, and he was hard and sturdy like a well-built house; his face was the first one Stensland had glimpsed from the station platform where he was hustled like cattle, along with a dozen others, by a man from the agency. Clyde had been wearing a hat, had been clutching a fistful of droopy flowers as his gaze swept across the burgeoning crowd until it landed, after some searching, on Stensland. Stensland felt it then, strongly: a jolt of recognition that made his spine sing and his eyes wet. He was here, this was his new life; he was home. 

Now here they are, wedded and bound together by ceremony, traipsing their way up the front door of _their_ house, _their_ stairs, slowing to a sudden stop in front of _their_ bedroom. Stensland had stayed in the room across it, listening to the unfamiliar creaks and sighs the house made in the darkness, trying not to terrify himself with thoughts of ghosts watching him in the dark, sleeping alone until the time was right and he could join his husband in bed where he could be warmed by his big hands. He dreamt of it that first night: hands cupping his face, pressed along the sides of his body, though Clyde never touched him unless to help him into his coat on market day, always keeping him at arm’s length.

It feels like years, this wait, longer than the train ride, longer than the arduous month at sea, longer even than the medical exam at the municipal building where Stensland was poked and prodded and made to squat while he was checked for diseases, his arms lifted, his tongue inspected. Then Clyde touches his shoulder, a hand so big Stensland feels his cheeks warm. Other parts of him, they fill with the same kind of warmth too, his skin rippling with goosebumps as he peers sheepishly up at Clyde in the hazy afternoon light. A fly buzzes on the windowpane and the bed creaks when Stensland shifts, moving to a corner so Clyde could sit down next to him more comfortably, leaning his weight on his hand. 

“May I kiss you?” Clyde asks. His lips are parted, his gaze dropping to Stensland’s mouth, then lifting again to look at the rest of his face. 

“What— what, yes,” Stensland says in English, though it takes him a moment to parse the meaning because of Clyde’s accent. 

Clyde kisses him, then, slow, tentative, easing him into it until Stensland’s lips part at the tender press of tongue. When Clyde moves away, a minute later, Stensland is already wet, from kissing, from being held so gently his chest shakes in an effort to hold back his cries. 

Clyde tips him onto his back, slowly, slowly, peeling off his simple linen shirt, then his trousers, white for the occasion, embarrassingly damp at the seat of his arse. Stensland blushes when Clyde looks at him in surprise, thinking, maybe, how ridiculously Stensland must want it for leaking so quickly after only a few short kisses. He’s never seen Clyde’s face look so undefended, as if he isn’t certain what to do with the sudden realization that his bride is gagging to be mounted. 

“It’s — you’re wet,” Clyde says. And then later when he undresses Stensland fully, “So wet.”

Stensland nods, embarrassed, but lets himself be looked at, wondering what it is his new husband sees: how unwitting his body must seem to him, marred by softness; his tiny nipples, his ugly bruises, the awkward skinny legs tapering into wide ugly feet. Clyde’s gaze is unfathomable, roaming the entire length of him, and then he takes a thin ankle in a rough palm and glances up at Stensland, his pupils blown, the promise in them making Stensland shiver. He’d been terrified at first, of meeting Clyde, and then later in the days leading to his wedding, of upsetting him so that he sent Stensland back on the first ship to Ireland. 

But his fears had all been for naught: Clyde had been nothing if not kind, never complaining about the bread which Stensland learned how to make with a disproportionate amount of water and dough, sweetening it with yogurt. The bread was always hard and unyielding, the stew always watery. His mam used to scold him for that, swatting at his hands which she often said were too delicate, too small for a man’s, even an omega, not fit for hard labour or work in the fields, not good for anything. He never learned to make bread the way she did it so that dough was airy and soft; he doubts he ever will. But for his husband, for Clyde, Stensland thinks: _maybe, someday._

Clyde touches his knee. “May I —” he says.

“Yes.”Stensland replies rather quickly, thinking: best to get this all over quickly. He’s not sure what he’s agreed to, only that he likes how Clyde is touching him, the warm dryness of his hands traveling up the sides of his shins, his flanks, coming to rest on top of Stensland’s thighs, kneading lightly; his hands thick, rough with callouses from working at the farm he will one day own once Stensland bears him a child, a condition of the Logan inheritance, Jimmy’s too and Mellie’s.

Stensland doesn’t need prompting; he spreads them with hardly any shame and bites his lip, rolling his body upwards as a shudder moves through him like an earthquake, slick pushing out, hot and sweet. He’s been kissed before, once — it had been the altar boy, of course, the transaction made in exchange for cigarettes — pushed against the wall while a knee nudged his legs apart — but that had been nothing like this, a joke, in comparison. 

This feels holy, like a prayer, his knees lifting of their own accord, showing his husband where he needs him the most, there, where the ache is unbearable, where he’s wanted him already on that first night, and even worse the nights after, tiptoeing across the hall to watch Clyde sleep, wanting nothing more than to lie next to him and smell the coal dust on his shirt. 

Stensland lifts his arms too, right above his head, presenting himself like an offering though in reality the picture he makes is probably more along the lines of limp fish, body lying there unadorned so that the lines of his ribs showed cleanly, the knobby knees knobbier, every freckle and scab standing in stark relief, everything unhidden. He thinks of the hair growing sparse under his arms, how he should have trimmed himself around his cock in preparation for this moment, the width of his hips making his cock appear smaller than it actually is. His cheeks flush, wanting to turn his head away in shame. 

But then Clyde licks his bottom lip again, asking for Stensland’s permission without words, looking nervous, afraid, that for a moment Stensland’s heart aches for this man he agreed to marry solely because his letters had read so beautifully. The late afternoon sun is slanting through the curtains fringing the windows, bathing the room in a dreamlike glow.

Stensland nods, canting his hips forward, more slick pushing out. “I want—” 

Clyde gives him his mouth, his tongue, hot and deft and spearing him open where he’s already tender, a hum reverberating in his throat as he laps at Stensland like a feast. Father Flanagan would not have approved — married people did not debase themselves like this, he’d say. But maybe it’s different in America, with their railroads and theircars, and the deliberate way they spoke. Maybe this is just how married people behaved behind closed doors.

Stensland’s head rubs against the coarse pillowcase. Clyde’s soft mouth leaves him for a moment, and Stensland realizes why: Stensland’s hand, on his cock, rubbing himself off in rhythm to Clyde’s probing tongue. He’s not supposed to do that; omegas are supposed to lie back and simply take it. Stensland’s never been a good omega though, too loud to be considered obedient, blasphemous even in private, snickering at the pamphlets handed to them after mass, which were only good anyway as kindling in the winter. His hand falters on his cock, enjoying the dry friction too much to let go. This is not the first time he’s touched himself; he’s meant to be chaste until marriage which Stensland thinks is such a lark.

Stensland bites his lip, then lets his hand drop to the side with an awkward flop. He’s still hard, still aching, still wet, but everything is at a standstill until Clyde spurs him into action. He holds his breath. 

“Touch yourself,” Clyde grunts. 

Stensland blinks down at him slowly. “What?”

“I want to see you touch yourself,” Clyde repeats.

It should be easy, but Stensland has never been watched openly before. He puts a tentative hand around his cock, gets a lazy rhythm going, training his eyes to the ceiling furred with cobwebs and then back to Clyde knelt between his legs, his cock stiff in his trousers. Stensland wonders if it hurts like that, Clyde not touching it, wonders how big it actually is out in the open, what it must taste like on his tongue. He’ll choke for sure, sore after Clyde is finished with him, stretched open after sharing his bed, after warming his cock, a vessel for his come, his pups. The thought makes him shiver. 

Stensland breathes through his teeth, nearly jumping out of his skin when he feels the passing glance of Clyde’s breath against his thighs, again, and then one more time, the coarseness of his beard scratching Stensland’s skin so that when he pulls away after Stensland comes the first time, it’s shiny in patches with smears of slick. Stensland should be embarrassed: it’s everywhere, across Clyde’s chin, painting his lips in a glossy sheen, runnels and runnels of slick. But Clyde only blinks at him and licks his lips, and Stensland’s blood, it runs hot.

Afterwards, Clyde stretches on top of Stensland to kiss him, then pulls out his cock to rub in the divot of Stensland’s hip. They kiss for a long time, until their lips are sore and raw, until Stensland’s mouth starts aching and he can do nothing more than nuzzle Clyde and move his face in his general direction, bumping their noses together; that’s when Clyde takes him, there on his back when he’s lazy with arousal, made drowsy by the nascent heat, sweat pasting his back to the bed. 

He can hear the breeze outside rattling the window, the rustle of clothing and the clatter of a belt hitting the floor as Clyde undresses hurriedly, the bed squeaking as the mattress dips once more under the weight of Clyde’s heavy knee. And then finally, there he is, all of him revealed when Stensland opens lust-fogged eyes and blinks and blinks again: the sturdy shape of him, hovering over Stensland, the heavy layers of muscles he’s built from working long hours under the sun, the ghost of a scar under his rib. From a bullet? Another one over his shoulder, badly stitched, rough-looking.

Stensland puts two fingers to Clyde’s collarbone, the soft dip there catching a bead of sweat. Clyde’s eyes meet his: quizzical, so Stensland says, “I like it, these marks. Everything. This, here. This.” Clyde seems almost shy, taken aback by this boldness when Stensland touches his arm, spidering his fingers over Clyde’s stump, jarred by how soft the skin is around the wrist. He closes his hand around it, then sighs when Clyde finally breaches him, pushing in one smooth continuous thrust until he’s seated inside and rubbing at the delicious ache. 

It feels a bit like… Stensland shuts his eyes, his toes curling inwards; there aren’t any words. He wants this, any way he can have it, everyday of his life, on his back like this with his legs spread, or bent over the kitchen table while Clyde remained clothed, fucking him after breakfast before he left to work, the food still hot on the plates, Stensland’s trousers puddled at his feet. Rough: on his hands and knees in the dirt, in the yard outside after he’d finished hauling the linen from the washing line, grass gathering under his fingernails.

“Good?” Clyde asks, his lips shaking. His hair is in his face when Stensland turns to look at him, smelling good, newly washed, laced with clean sweat. 

Stensland moans, nods frantically, speaking in Gaelic, until he remembers where he is, and says, “Yes— yes, good. Very.”

Stensland’s knees jerk apart, and he holds Clyde steady against him with his hands pressed against his wide back, his ankles flanking Clyde’s sides. Clyde moves, a slow easy grind, the bed creaking, thudding the wall. He fucks Stensland, deep the way Stensland can never seem to get enough of, pounding into him and making him leak harder.

Stensland thinks: _yes, yes, please, my love,_ screaming it in his head until it rises out of him in a series of whiny pleases. “Mate me, mate me, fill me with come. I want it! Please!”

Clyde kisses his trembling eyelids, “Yes,” he groans. “Yes, yes, I’ll fill you with seed, get you with child. Make you so fat with my pups you can hardly leave the bed.”

“Pups?” Stensland says. “There will be many?”

“As many as you can bear me sweetheart,” Clyde says. “A full house.”

It’s only talk, the two of them being overzealous, but Stensland moans his approval and whines when Clyde drives his hips forward, stirring him up with rolling lazy thrusts, before pummeling him again until he’s begging, for things he’s never voiced out loud, for harder, and _more_ , needing so badly to be filled, to be fucked. It’s... _good_ , rough and dirty, their bodies connecting with a sounding slap, slap, slap, each thrust punctuated by a biting kiss; he’s never thought it would be like this, not in his wildest dreams, straddling a pillow, rubbing his cock and lying in his little cot when he was sure his mam and da were sound asleep across the room, fingering himself with two fingers, and then four because two didn’t feel like enough; he was empty inside always, waiting it seemed, for an alpha, for Clyde whose cock is so big Stensland can hardly breathe from how full he feels, how finally and utterly complete.

It isn’t until later when Stensland is on top of him, riding him into the mattress that they both come very hard. Stensland whimpers half in pain from the force of his own orgasm as Clyde’s hand grips his hip, sure to leave a bruise. Stensland jerks and clenches around Clyde’s cock, leaking slick, coating Clyde’s chest in stripes of come, mouth opening and closing in a reedy gasp. He glances down when he feels Clyde cupping a broad palm over his chest, thumbing his stiff nipples, tracing the shallow valley between them with a curious finger, picturing probably, how swollen they will be once filled with milk, aching constantly and puffy, flushed a ruddy pink. He said he wanted a full house, plenty of children, to keep Stensland full and fat and pregnant, relegated to the bed. 

Stensland can see it, him with a belly, pale and round like an egg. He knows it’s rather fanciful and the thought should terrify him but now he can’t help but think about the future, how this might truly be the beginning of his new life in America. Eventually, they’ll start a family, and then… who knows. It’s too early to tell if Clyde’s seed will take. Stensland’s heats have not been coming at regular intervals, spaced further and further apart due to a poor diet. It may take some time.

They lie together in the aftermath, locked together by Clyde’s knot, which Stensland is careful to maneuver around when he arranges himself across Clyde’s chest. He twitches his nose when he feels Clyde touching his face and peers up at him with one sleepy eye, his view distorted by his hair. 

“Darlin’,” Clyde says, and Stensland blushes immediately, feeling oddly shy. It shouldn’t feel brand new when he’s said it before in all his letters, but hearing Clyde say it after kissing Stensland, and fucking him, and knotting him until he keened, feels almost like a promise. 

“Husband,” Stensland says. Then they lie there for some time, not talking, Clyde’s hand in Stensland hair, grooming him.

Stensland watches the light outside shift and soften to dusk. He rubs his face against Clyde’s chest, making a noise of contentment when Clyde rubs the back of his neck and kneads the muscle there with light touches. 

“Your voice,” Clyde whispers, in the ensuing silence. He’s softened a while ago, slipping out of Stensland with a quiet groan, but they haven’t moved apart since and have remained impossibly tied to each other like lassos. “I like the sound of it. The way you — you talk,” Clyde finishes.

“My voice?” Stensland almost laughs. He’s never heard that one before, often told to quiet his laughter in church, to stay silent when his da was home so he and his mam would be left alone in relative peace, unhurt. He flits Clyde an incredulous glance but Clyde is looking at him with an expression that makes even the most stubborn parts of him yield. So he does that: he yields, and tucks his head under Clyde’s chin and traces the length of his good arm. 

“Tell me a story,” Clyde says.

“A story.” Stensland tries to think of a good one. He knows a few, from the bible, from church, children’s stories with lots of talking animals in them, a couple of particularly bawdy folktales. He never learned how to read, his da stopped sending him to school before he could make sense of his letters, but he had a good ear for story, a great memory, a knack for retelling anything he may have overheard from the alehouse down the street, bettered of course with his own personal flourishes. 

Clyde waits, watching him, the ring on his finger making Stensland shiver when it glides against his overheated skin in rough passes. Stensland lifts his own hand, the one with the identical ring, and flexes it before laying it on Clyde’s bicep. He feels Clyde’s answering hiss. 

Stensland remembers his mam, telling him this story. She wanted a good life for him, Stensland knows, a rich husband, a big house, all these things she was afraid she couldn’t give him that she had wanted too for herself as a young girl, a poor farmer’s daughter who could only sew and bake bread. Instead Stensland has this: a good husband, a ring on his finger, a house that creaked and moaned against strong gusts of wind. He never wanted wealth to begin with. Sometimes one only needs very little.

“Have you heard the one about the salmon?” Stensland begins, glancing up at Clyde. 

Clyde hums, answer enough, and Stensland continues, “There was once a young boy who was sent to live with a very wise man named Finnegas…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
